any government worker that doesn’t give a fuck: I will write your bullet points. just reach out.

Journalism teachers, did you know the Freedom of the Press Foundation has a FREE digital security curriculum for J students? Get it get it get it. J Students, if your teachers won’t get it, self-organize and teach it to each other. freedom.press/digisec/g…

I know white house reporters are currently cowering for access, but it would be nice for someone to ask about Elon’s continued and ever-more-public drug abuse in the context of its threat to national security.

OK enough of this shit, I’m heading to Stardew Valley.

The one solace I take in this news of Trump possibly taking over the post office: I once was in a hotel hosting a postal employee union convention and I have never seen people party as hard, as long, and as wildly as those folks. It was just unreal. They will not take this shit lightly in the least.

At a grade school black history concert right now and it is chaotic and awful and honestly I’d rather be anywhere else but also fuck every monster that wants to take this from kids.

Just got a cocaine brick of TRYING patches delivered. Help me out and get some! shop.dansinker.com/products/…

If we’re doing a King maybe more of a Louis XVI thing?

Every art weirdo of a certain vintage in Chicago has always been ready to stand up for Ukraine because of living in the Ukranian Village in the 90s. They were our brusk landlords who actually fixed things! They were the old ladies who served us perogies! The tracksuit mobsters who left us alone!

So let me get this straight: every tech exec and VC is just absolutely tripping balls all the time now and the best they’ve come up with is a copyright-eating machine and fascism? www.wired.com/story/ket…

I’m fun at parties.

This is the doge rat looking at your tax returns right now. www.motherjones.com/politics/…

Definitely think maybe this is too many plane crashes?

Absolutely thrilled about some little doge rat named Shrimpcock or whatever looking at my taxes. Enjoy.

desperately trying to smash my thick meat brain thoughts into something that resembles sense

Snowy and cold, but Chicago stood up for trans kids outside Lurie Children’s Hospital today.

the dems have tens of millions of email addresses, they could be using them to do opposition comms straight into inboxes. fuck fundraising, just the news of what is happening and what they are doing about it, sent direct to people.

Just went to Costco for the first time and feel like I might die

The little doge rats continue to be stymied by basic web tech. www.theverge.com/news/6128…

unfathomably, blindingly, angry rn but actually getting work done. the body is a remarkably adaptable thing.

As someone that’s been on an Obamacare/ACA exchange plan for years, me and my fam are getting ALLLLLLL our shit done this year because who tf knows what’s next.

Well, being alive was fun I guess.

How much of what has been “discovered” by Elon’s little doge rats has actually been public record all along? Feels like one of those venn diagrams that’s actually a circle.

I’m just listening to Hoover’s “Electrolux” on loop rn. Exactly the right foreboding vibes for this moment in time.

On today’s Rebel Spirit, after a year of being stonewalled by the district, we ask if there’s another way to find out what they’re talking about.

Listener, we filed FOIAs. rebelspiritpodcast.com/episodes/…

The New York Dolls' David Johansen having to crowdfund medical care is so sad and cruel. This country just chews up everyone eventually. deadline.com/2025/02/n…

I’ll take “Ketamine” for $500, Alex

This man has not even been president for one month.

Eric Adams is on the first free flight to Turkey to celebrate.

Well, my fascism coal mine canary just died.

A new episode of Rebel Spirit comes out tomorrow. One of two this month, with big updates! You can catch up now on our NEW website: rebelspiritpodcast.com

Just remembered back in the day when Philly did this.

Right now we need stories of the powerful taking it fully and cleanly in the nuts, so an A+ night start to finish.

Don’t like football, but I fucking LOVE petty.

mea-culpa line I just wrote in an email: “I Jurrasic Parked this: too caught up in whether we could, didn’t ask if we should.”

Not me spending my Saturday night prepping some open records for publishing.

Hope one of those little Doge rats enjoyed watching me fill out the FAFSA right now.

Every day I check my Google Maps like it’s some kind of fascist cole mine canary.

Fuck these fascists for ruining a chill Friday

So the reporting I’d love to see is why, seemingly out of thin air, USAID became the far right’s big bad. Maybe I don’t pay enough attention (jfc) but like… it wasn’t a talking point during the campaign. That first week it wasn’t a priority. But now??? Now they say every bad thing rolls up to it.

Hear ye hear ye, another meeting of the Insomnia Club is called to order.

At my most optimistic, I just don’t think they can sustain this.

ProPublica has launched a handy tracker to keep tabs on who’s who among Musk’s little fash goons projects.propublica.org/elon-musk…

Imagine if billions of dollars HAD been stolen to fund left wing news media. Imagine.

All journalists should work through this very good security checklist from Freedom of the Press Foundation. freedom.press/digisec/b…

Small news orgs that are suddenly on the receiving end of gov documents might want to acquaint themselves with Secure Drop. securedrop.org

(Which in another lifetime I gave early funding to.)

Nobody has ever been as good at something as my dog is at finding and eating shit that will kill her off the ground

I hate all of this for us.

So any 20-year-old self-styled 10x engineer operating today is largely writing code with a lot of help from ChatGPT so like… that feels like a whole hell of a lot of data security issues not even being remotely addressed rn

Lots of new folks here reading & sharing my stuff. Thank you!! I’d love to ask you to follow along by subscribing. It’s free and fun. Or something. dansinker.com/follow/

Everything was so shit that I forgot Paczki Day was today. Absolute failure.

Absolutely raced to do it. Have to be completely thrilled to stop doing the bare-ass minimum level of lip service.

You blow up the department of education for one reason: you want to resegregate the schools.

little fash dipshits

this bigass box of Girl Scout Cookies that just arrived might be the only good thing left rn

Everything has gone to shit, but at least we have Insomnia Club. Welcome.

Can someone get me back to the Sinbad Shazam universe please?

What if you’re always angry but can’t turn into the Hulk, what then.

Dreaming of the day that I don’t have to think about Elon Musk and his little fash dipshits.

sign of the times that I just had to reup an order for TRYING patches. shop.dansinker.com/products/…

Come on, please.

The Arsenal with a good reminder that sometimes you can face the bully and punch them in the fucking dick.

I wrote about how, at a moment where so much insane shit is happening and so many people are trying to deny it, writing it down is a radical act: dansinker.com/posts/202…

everything seems real cool rn

Just to really ensure today is as awful as possible we’re watching Attack of the Clones.

Seems like someone is fucking around with governmental DNS records. What could possibly go wrong.

The fun thing is I’m completely ignoring that I lost half my income two weeks ago. This should work out well.

I am begging you: if you are writing a thread of more than a couple posts, get a blog. I don’t mean this in a mean way. I mean: allow this thought to continue to exist, outside of this platform, in an actually coherent, readable format that sticks around for longer than 20 minutes. You deserve it!

actually channeled all this anxeity usefully today.

Stephen Miller absolutely would start crying if you pulled a halfway decent headfake on him.

So basically a weird creep is signing a never-ending pile of decrees drafted by other weird creeps which will be implemented and enforced by yet more weird creeps.

My notebook just full of shit like this now.

Seeing Chicago stand up against ICE this week reminded me of why I love this city so much, and gave me a focal point for a reflection on the 50th issue of Punk Planet, which was dedicated to the city. Read it: dansinker.com/posts/202…

If it wasn’t so goddamn tragic, Robert F Kennedy being considered to run anything with “health” in its title would be absolutely hilarious. The man like an overcooked extra from the Walking Dead.

Woke up with a start, had a completely formed opener for this thing I need to write and scrawled it in my journal in the dark in the most unintelligible handwriting that has ever come from my hand.

Anyway, welcome to Insomnia Club.

I’ve been writing more lately and you should sign up to get it in your inbox. No charge, no upsell, just good times. And not on fucking Substack. dansinker.com/follow/

I didn’t believe this was a real headline because it’s just too perfect, but it really is.

🤞🤞🤞✈️🤞🤞🤞

www.cnbc.com/2025/01/2…

this motherfucker has been president for barely more than a week

Bookship, the anti-amazon that gives $$ to local bookstores with every sale, now has ebooks. That’s a big deal: bookshop.org/info/eboo…

Fucking BEGGING for a precedented time

To circle back on my eggless breakfast thread, just ate a DELICIOUS sausage, potato, and brown rice breakfast burrito that I made a batch of yesterday and froze. Thanks so much to everyone for their excellent advice and ideas!

It’s time once again to call Insomnia Club to order.

escaping reality by watching a lecture on grocery store sign lettering. www.youtube.com/watch

Chicago is getting hammered by raids and Dr Phil is livestreaming and I hate fucking everything. chicago.suntimes.com/live/ice-…

Between eggs and what this Columbia situation will do to coffee, RIP breakfast I guess.

Watching the Phantom Menace for the first time in a long while and jfc what an absolute shitshow it still is.

Fuck Nazis.

Ok who has tips for quick, inexpensive, savory, egg-free breakfast options that aren’t just a hunk of bread because I need em

Ok who has tips for quick, inexpensive, savory, egg-free breakfast options that it’s just a hunk of bread because I need em

Fuck Mitch McConnell. No credit for performative weak sauce bullshit.

That piece of shit is getting dragged of every strip club in DC tonight.

Ok so now that the week is over, I think it’s safe to say this was a real all-timer of a shitshow.

It’s been a few days and I’m not happy to be back, but welcome to Insomnia Club.

Last night I wrote about right now, the collapse of media, and the need for all of us to make things outside of the oligarchy, because we’re all we have. dansinker.com/posts/202…

I wrote about Trump, the oligarchy, media, hiding German anti-fascist texts in seed packets, and how it’s up to us now to get information out: dansinker.com/posts/202…

There’s a very powerful idea in Annalee Newitz’s time travel novel The Future of Another Timeline, where the time travelers gather to recite their memories from the times they experienced before the timelines changed.

That feels like us now.

The thing that was so clear working on Rebel Spirit and is just on full display right now is that segregationists are everywhere, will push back against everything no matter how small, will deny reality that doesn’t line up with their worldview, and will always be fighting to take their power back.

you know what’s hard? concentrating.

No time for bullshit in my inbox today.

Apple’s Tim Cook might be the smartest of all of the tech oligarchs because he was there but didn’t sit in the lineup and so he’s absent from all the photographs while still just as shitty as the rest.

Greetings from the thermometer on my back porch

I have had many friends work at the USDS—some are still there now—and every single one of them left good jobs in tech to work for the government because they believed that the government should really help people. That all got blown up tonight, but thank you for your service.

just this song on loop until it comes true: www.youtube.com/watch

anyway, so this all seems very bad

My St Pauli ANTIFASCIST hoodie is all I’ll be wearing for the next while k thanks.

🖕

Not today satan.

All day instead of my brain being like “oh no Trump takes office tomorrow and things are going to be terrible,” my brain has decided to make me have high anxiety every time the heat turns on, worrying that this one will be the one where it breaks and we’ll be heatless in the polar vortex.

I just keep writing pithy little posts and deleting them and then writing new little jokes and deleting them and then just staring into the middle distance for a while and then trying again

As a parent of a Gen Z kid, I can tell you that their whole entire lives they’ve seen the government put them last. Guns, covid, student loans, cost-of-living, it’s always their gen that has gotten fucked.

This TikTok ban vividly reinforces what they already know.

Finally took care of the real enemy, Marvel Snap.

The best time to start building a little spot for yourself on the internet independent of platforms was yesterday. The second best time is right fucking now.

Spent a bunch of the day with some folks passing through town and am convinced more than ever that person-to-person is how we’re going to make it through this next stretch.

Chicago, it’s time to protect your neighbors.

gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/1…

Anyone else find themselves just cruising along normally and then remember what happens on Monday and everything comes to a screetching halt?

Inauguration shoes just arrived.

Thinking a lot about how for those of us of a certain age, the people who taught us it was OK to be different are all leaving this earth and it feels so desperately lonely.

RIP David Lynch. King of the weirdos.

I’ve worked with dinks like this before that put enormous numbers on a slide deck and the bosses nod enthusiastically and reset everything to meet a made up goal that will never be achieved. (from www.nytimes.com/2025/01/1… )

Here we are, once again, welcoming you to Insomnia Club. It’s the worst club, but we’re in it together.

So like the tiktok ban just seems like a collosally stupid idea, poorly executed, and benefitting basically no one. Absolute A+ job all around.

For the last year I’ve been helping the Chicago Reader try and revitalize their web presence and strategy. It’s been slow going and we were so close to some really cool things and yesterday the bottom fell out. chicagoreader.com/reader/pr…

Rather unexpectedly I’ve got a slightly freed-up work schedule and absolutely would love to work with good folks who have problems to solve. Drop a line!

Wait it’s the MIDDLE of JANUARY???

What the fuck.

Woke up glad it was the weekend. It’s not. It is Insomnia Club though. Welcome.

Lol this week.

Not at all pleased to welcome you yet again to Insomnia Club.

Last night I wrote about Los Angeles and Chicago and ritual and rebuilding. It’s a little love letter and a reminder that there is hope even after the darkest sunsets. dansinker.com/posts/202…

Well well welcome to Insomnia Club. I don’t want to be here and neither do you. And yet here we are.

The first time I went to LA I thought I’d hate it. Instead, I fell in love. In this week of devastating fires, I wrote about that beautiful city, its sunsets, its people, and its dreams.

Read “Standing on the line” on my site: dansinker.com/posts/202…

Why in the world did I decide—when my life was fine and not really in need of anything—to support the Arsenal football club.

Sometimes I lie awake and think about these headlines and sometimes I just lie awake.

Well here we are awake once again. Welcome back… to Insomnia Club.

The person that invented hummus really nailed that shit

More than anything it would be nice, for once, to be given the time to properly grieve.

Just gonna say that we never should have shoveled VC cash at kids that never lived in the world for even a minute.

I mean I gotta hand it to them, the weeklong Mark Zuckerberg: Shitbag tour rollout was flawless

banner day for wrist slaps. www.reuters.com/legal/us-…

Had a friend post that they could take in a cat, had another friend post that a friend’s parents needed a place for their cat, and now that first friend has that other friend’s friend’s parent’s cat.

Change happens one person at a time.

I love that the Santa Monica Pier livecams are operating and you can just watch people at the beach and the pier like they’re giving a big middle finger to the apocalypse. pacpark.com/santa-mon…

one of those days where I’m uselessly refreshing news instead of actually doing work

Side-eye about the LA Times aside, their fire map is very good, built by a good dev who I know personally. Solid, will vouch. Just zoom into LA. www.latimes.com/wildfires…

Every year without fail the online quickie ordaining site sends me a happy anniversary email from when I became a reverend.

Anyway, happy 7th anniversary to me.

Yesterday I wrote about getting off Threads and how we all need to define the lines we won’t cross now that every tech exec has bent the knee to Trump. dansinker.com/posts/202…

Checking into the doctor and the person running the desk walked to the back and said, loudly, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Same same.

Feels great to see hell unfold in California and know that exactly the wrong people for the job will be taking power in 12 days.

Lightly banging the gavel and whispering that Insomnia Club is called to order. Very much not glad to be here or to see you, but welcome.

Hope the LA Times is being sure to print the fire’s point of view too.

Who’s building a Stories-like product on AT proto or the Fediverse?

LA folks and friends, I hope that you are safe.

After Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was folding to Donald Trump and the far right, I can’t stick around on Threads. Leaving Twitter was hard, but this is easy.

Read “Pulling the Threads” on my site: dansinker.com/posts/202…

so like Trump 100% wants Greenland because the mercator map projection makes it look enormous right?

Missed the news yesterday that Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White has joined the Meta board of directors. www.npr.org/2025/01/0…

Made it a week into the new year before calling to order the first meeting of Insomnia Club for 2025.

Four years later the only person at the top to have seen any real repercussions from the entire 2020 election denial movement is Rudy, which is simultaneously an outrage, hilarious, and sad. Like they all met up and said he was gonna be the fall guy while he’s still waiting for the calvery to come.

This week I watched two separate Netflix shows of entirely different genres both with completely shoehorned-in references to Britta Filters and I hate the world we live in.

TOMORROW, JAN 5! Come see me, Mikki Kendall, Peter Sagal, and 17 others of Chicago’s best speaking for two minutes each at 20x2. 7pm, Gman, $20, will be wild. 20x2.org/chicago/

Training their bots for the dunks

The first small step in making a better internet for each other is starting to establish a presence there that isn’t owned by a platform. Separate your self from Meta and Twitter and Substack and own your presence. Is it as easy? No, but it’s worth it.

If anyone is looking for a lightweight journaling framework for the new year, a couple years ago I wrote how I approach it. I’m now entering my fifth unbroken year of daily use. dansinker.com/posts/ref…

Waking up to carnage: an American story.

Here we go.